Wall Street Mushroom Cloud
Overshadows other negative advances



Wall Street Rap: From Rob Roberts.

Billion-eyed audience, the present predicament needs to come to a crashing halt. The bailout bill before the stymied and dazzled Congress doesn't address the foreclosure crisis and gives a blank check of almost a trillion to Hank Paulson who has nothing but a list of failures behind him: rescue AIG, save my buddies on Wall Street, on and on.

Do nothing, yes, some banks will fail. But they probably need to. That's why FDIC is there. Right? Excuse my financial ignorance, billion-eyed audience; however, the thing is, just because we can watch the digital numbers of the market plummet like some impossible elevator, and it's dramatic and causes teevee hosts to sound a little frightened, that's not the whole story.

The bond market is the big problem, and that's, as a trader acquaintance of mine described to me, is in the shitter. "It's a mess," he said. "It's going to take...a long time to clean it up." Which means there will be credit crunch; banks are shut up like hurt faces right now around the world. Ireland nationalized its banks almost overnight. Germany has nationalized three of its banks. This means money going to small businesses is on the verge of drying up.

Why you can't restructure the mortgages, and have that part of this enormous plan, I don't know. But just because the arrow points up one day, and down the next, doesn't mean we're OK. No. We're not. Another Great Depression is not likely -- we're a richer society now. But things are going to get tougher -- layoffs will increase, and where those people will get assistance, or for how long, that's going to strain the system even more.

So this cockamamie notion that we won't be able to go tour ATMs next week is a scare tactic. People getting kicked out of their houses is a major problem, because of the real estate taxes needed by municipalities. These go, the cities go, then there'll just be more panic. In fact, what we get for our lousy trillion dollars is a tourniquet on a wound that may staunch the trauma until the next President takes office -- the poor SOB, whoever that is.

And if things are as bad as Congress was saying, why take off for the Jewish holidays? That was an excuse to pull the plug on an overheated situation and to allow deals to get made away from staring news cameras.


Congressman Dennis Kucinich yesterday on Democracy Now!:

REP. DENNIS KUCINICH: This is a copy of the bill which will provide for a $700 billion bailout of Wall Street. It has provisions in it where it talks about helping homeowners, but when you read the fine print, you see it has language like “may” instead of “shall” and “encouraging” instead of “mandating” help for the millions of homeowners who are worried right now about whether they’re going to lose their home. There’s no help for them in this.

So what we have here is a rescue plan that essentially gives all the speculators a bailout and puts the bad debts in the custody of the government. The president of the Dallas Federal Reserve Bank has said that this plan could create a fiscal chasm, says that the problem isn’t tight monetary policy, it’s the reckless behavior of some of these investors who have now found themselves in a position where a government bailout is going to help reward their bad behavior.

AMY GOODMAN: Is it any better than when it was first introduced by the Treasury Secretary, by Henry Paulson?

REP. DENNIS KUCINICH: Well, you know, that implies that you would accept the underlying premise. I reject the underlying premise that we needed this bill. And as a matter of fact, that we’re putting this up before an adjournment in an election season shows that Congress is being put under extraordinary pressure to bail out Wall Street. We haven’t looked at any alternatives, Amy. This is—you know, it isn’t as though, if you had a liquidity crisis, that—you know, a real one—that you’d start to look at all the alternatives. We haven’t done that. We have a bill here, a bill of more than a hundred pages, that we haven’t had a single hearing on the bill, you know—on the concept, yes, on what Paulson and Bernanke asked for initially. But, you know, we need to have hearings on this. There’s 400 economists and three Nobel Prize-winning economists who have said, “Whoa, wait a minute! What are you doing? Why are you rushing this?” You know, this thing doesn’t smell right, frankly.

AMY GOODMAN: What do you think has to happen right now?

REP. DENNIS KUCINICH: Well, you know, Congress better get ready with a plan B. If this thing goes down, we need to find a way to help Wall Street pay for its own problems. You can do that with a 20—.25 percent stock transfer tax, cancellation of dividends. You know, make the shareholders and the investors have to pay for the funny business that was going on on Wall Street. Why make the taxpayers pay? You know, the very underlying idea of this needs to be challenged, and frankly, there hasn’t been enough of that going on.

Well, what we have is a transfer of wealth, actually. It’s a continuation of a transfer of wealth. This whole government has become nothing more than a big machine that transfers the wealth upwards with our tax policies, our energy policies, with this fiscal policies, with the war. All the wealth of the country goes from the pockets of the people into the hands of a few. This is a very dangerous moment. You know, it’s the biggest amount of injection of capital by the government in a single time since the New Deal. And frankly, there is no trickle down here. There’s just rewarding bad behavior.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

While we weren't looking, really, Congress passed a massive bailout bill for the automotive industry just a few days ago -- to the tune of $35 billion to Detroit auto makers. The undertaking is bigger than the controversial 1980 Chrysler bailout, undergirds private companies, and further fuses private enterprise with the government. Worse, this isn't an "all the sudden" notion, but has been on the drawing board for 18 months.

This is an excerpt from that noted left-wing pinko newsweekly, US News & World Report:

"Exact details will come later, but the loans would probably amount to at least $5 billion for each of the Detroit 3, plus smaller amounts for suppliers. That would allow them to borrow money at interest rates as low as 4 percent—a steep discount compared with the double-digit rates they're paying now. Over several years, the automakers could save hundreds of millions in financing costs. Plus, they'll have five years before they have to start repaying the loans.

It might seem like a stealth rescue, but the plan has been in the works for at least 18 months. Approval for the loans was first included in last year's Energy Independence Act. Earlier this year, the automakers sought a first installment of loans totaling about $6 billion. But the nationwide credit crunch severely crimped their ability to borrow, and besides, next to bailouts like $200 billion for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, a mere $6 billion started to seem unduly modest. So Detroit raised the ante to $25 billion, the most allowed under current law."

You can read the whole pathetic thing here.

Papers? May I see your papers?

Attorney General Mukasey is behind legislation that makes "usual suspects" of us all.

From Wired:

"U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey on Saturday denied that the Bush administration -- in conjunction with the nation's telecommunication companies -- devised a "dragnet" electronic surveillance program that funneled Americans' communications to the National Security Agency without court warrants.

But the attorney general also insisted that defending his claim in court would harm national security.

"Specific information demonstrating that the alleged dragnet has not occurred cannot be disclosed on the public record without causing exceptional harm to national security," Mukasey wrote in a federal court filing in San Francisco. "However, because there was no such alleged content-dragnet, no provider participated in that alleged activity."

It was the first time Mukasey, as the nation's top law enforcement official, provided an emphatic and wholesale written courthouse denial of allegations contained in lawsuits accusing the Bush administration of widescale domestic spying in the years following the 2001 terror attacks. Keith Alexander, the NSA director, issued a similar courthouse denial in a 2007 court document (.pdf).

Despite Mukasey's denial, contained in a court filing (.pdf) made public Saturday, Mukasey asked a federal judge to grant immunity to the nation's telecommunications companies accused of assisting with the alleged surveillance dragnet. It is the first time the government has invoked the immunity legislation (.pdf) Congress approved July 9, which was signed by President Bush the next day."

Following this, further description from the American Civil Liberties Union, which, I know, members of the billion-eyed audience consider traitorous fifth columnists. Tough.

der new FBI guidelines proposed by Attorney General Michael Mukasey, all the FBI has to do to put anybody they want under prolonged physical surveillance is assert an “authorized purpose” such as detecting or preventing crime or protecting “national security."

These kinds of Bush/Cheney/Gonzales/Mukasey “just trust us” policies have been eroding our rights for the past eight years. After illegal spying and top-level torture policies coming from the White House, this is absurd. Enough is enough!

These new guidelines would allow the FBI to interview you, your friends and family under a false pretext. The FBI could recruit secret informants, and have them infiltrate peaceful protest groups. And the FBI to could initiate investigations based on little more than race, ethnicity or religion.

The FBI could also search commercial databases for personal details about your life with no real reason.

And all of this would be allowed without an ounce of evidence that you or anyone else has done anything wrong.

These guidelines represent one step closer to a police state. And the worst part is that there is good reason to believe the FBI has been violating its internal guidelines all along.

Fortunately, there is something we can do about this before the new regulations are implemented.

Demand that the Inspector General at the Department of Justice launch an investigation to determine if the FBI has been violating its own guidelines. The Inspector General’s office at the Department of Justice has proven to be an unbiased, internal watchdog that has consistently exposed wrongdoing. We need to urge the IG to do it again. Take action now at:

http://action.aclu.org/fbiguidelines

Shiver Me Timbers!

And then there's Sudanese pirates who've hijacked a freighter with 33 Russian tanks aboard. And the thing is, while extreme, this isn't unusual for those waters.

A U.S. destroyer and several other warships have been dispatched to deal with this. French commandos have learned one way to interrupt the pirates is to shoot out the outboard motors of their boats from helicopters.

This'll be a movie, before too long.

You see stuff like this, and start thinking about the availability of fissile material...and..well.

Read about it here. And here.

This Music Is In My Head

I've been hearing this tune, Serious And Purposeful String Mood by Peter Howard Morris on the public service advert "To Our Leaders" where it is used with arresting affect paired with dramatic images of alternative energy and the glum, intense faces of people who ostensibly are saying: get us off the foreign oil.

You can hear the whole song on the De Wolfe site, Track 8, here.

In my fantasy, this music is the featured music bed for the documentary "2008" that covers the span from January to January; we got floods, fires, famines, wars, this Presidential race with the potential for either an historic victory or a crippling loss, economic shudders, the Olympics, all this, and yes, pirates.

This doco would not be narrated but use news and found footage, YouTube, private material, and some damn fast and acute editing to take us through the rollercoaster ride this has been -- this is supposing that the species is going to survive past Janaury 2009.

I was listening to this music while watching the market plummet yesterday and it just seemed appropriate.

Hope all of you are well.

Triumph of the Neurotic Simplifiers
The zero-sum game of U.S. politics claims yet another victim


Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich, who as the billion-eyed audience may recall has been a subject in posts past, (shown here with his partner-in-life Elizabeth, via the now Flying Dutchman Kucinich website), isn't part of the Presidential Beauty Pageant anymore.

He was turned off by the mainstream media because he couldn't afford to haul their pampered behinds around on buses. Kucinich got shut out of debates since he couldn't get the attention he deserved, and due to his lack of access to airplay, he couldn't participate in the roulette style methodology of politics posing as democratic politics in this country.

Just turn off the money machines. Television should participate in democracy, rather than sell underarm deoderant, and give time to candidates during election cycles--half our a piece--like infomercials. They must air a certain percentage of commerials with a lottery as to who gets on when. Take the need to raise such staggering amounts to run, and you'll get a better grade of candidate. Simple. Except then people of the nation don't want better candidates, otherwise they would've taken decisive action a long time ago to make that happen.

We are content to bumble along with a parade of meritocratic milquetoast mediocres long as their views reflect what around somewhat less than half the country says it thinks is important. This isn't republican democracy as it should be; this is more like a psychological disorder.

I suppose I knew the day of Kucinich's announcement was coming, I just didn't want it now. But a man has to know when to cut his losses. And he wants to keep his Congressional seat. People may have wanted his message, but he couldn't reach enough of them who would've otherwise cared.

So, welcome to the John McCain presidency, a foundering economy and unending war and rumors of war, here, there and everywhere, and a consistent refusal to face the deficit music. Anybody who seeks even to approach the hard cold truths is labeled a kook, or ignored. Ron Paul has his cult following. Mike Gravel sunk without a trace. Kucinich, with his pocket Constitution and wild and woolly ideas about, well, peace, didn't get his message through. But I'm not even sure enough people, who could make the difference, wanted to hear what he was saying.

Hillary is unelectable. Obama could possibly give McCain a run for his money; but in the end, the people of the United States are too scared and the conservative political structures too powerful to allow him an election, or if he manages, a term of office that isn't fraught with constant political and personal attacks that will neuter his effectiveness.

But my guess is that the pallid McCain will be the White House's next occupant, because he's old, not really a maverick anymore if he ever was, and few people really want the paradigm shift that is so needed. And perhaps that is well. McCain will inherit a rasher of shit from Bush, and McCain will go down with James Buchanan and Herbert Hoover as men who failed in a crisis.

Those in the field who have a seat in Congress--Kucinich, Paul, Obama and Clinton--should go back and do what they're supposed to do. Provide the balance to an executive that is bloated like a summer tick, swollen on other people's blood, and inflated further by arrogance and delusions of grandeur.

They've all failed. Every single last one of them. Some have tried to restrain the curtain that's falling over us all, but they aren't getting enough assistance. Nobody wants to believe that the ship can, in fact, sink if the management is insufficient enough wrap the vessel around an iceberg.

The Republicans seek to bribe the citizenry with $300 a piece, and underwrite the stupidity of those who enrolled in ARMs, and thus we're all culpable in the downfall, yet no one is taking the blame. From Enron to the Bush administration's shilly shallying about whatever torture is, and the 935 lies told to get us in the sucking sands of Iraq, to the sub prime mortgage lenders--and their buyers--it's all just rock and roll, right? None of this seems to matter to anybody.

And I'm told by those who wish to hope, that, hey, it's still early, and maybe Hillary (who at this point seems to me assured the coronation, er, I mean nomination) can win the Presidency. I just don't have enough confidence in the U.S. electorate, which seems at best bewildered and at worst deluded, in making a choice that isn't a pallid white guy. We are a Coke v. Pepsi country, after all.

How heartless the rightists can get is evidenced by the bloviating John Gibson of Fixed Noise, cracking wise on the day of Heath Ledger's death, and the nutjobs who say they'll picket the actor's funeral because he dared to make a film where he portrayed a gay sheep herder (not a freaking cowboy, as everybody says).

These people say the respect life. They don't. They respect nothing and nobody.

As Norman F. Cantor, the great Medieval historian wrote, emphasis mine:

"The study of medieval history teaches us that civilization is the result of a complex interpenetration of spirit and power of moral and material resources; that this delicate compromise is not easy to maintain, that its preservation requires mature intelligence, sophisticated moderation, and constant vigilance; and that the enemies of civilisation, apart from the uncomprehending primitives, are the socially irresponsible zealots and the neurotic simplifiers."

Meanwhile, How Will This Play In Iowa and New Hampshire: It Won't.

Moments before she was killed, Benazir Bhutto raised out from the sunroof of her car. Her effort to be seen and connect with her admirers proved a fatal choice. Via the Guardian, Getty Images, photographer John Moore.


Washington Post reporter Dana Milbank was asked by Keith Olbermann last night how the Bhutto slaying would affect voters in... Iowa. And Milbank responded, not much. When the Hillary Clinton mentioned the tragedy at a rally, Milbank said, the spectators seemed puzzled.

Mr. and Mrs. Murgatroyd aren't going to give a fig about the death of a foreign leader, in particular one in the seeming distant and weird land of Pakistan, which is all a bunch of terrorists and Hindoos and A-rabs and heathens, anyway. What they care about is cheap gas and low taxes and God, guns and gays. Unless she's Lady Diana, then they go all weak in the knees and weepy. What the Murgatroyds want is the safety to drive their massive vehicles with one hand so they can yammer into their cell phones about how the liberals are destroying the country as they run over dogs and small children and curse them for being in their way.

No, they won't care until the seams of the earth pop open like a baseball on the oven and a conflagaration reaches out and disrupts their lives. Then they wonder: How did this happen?




Benazir Bhutto with her children Bakhtwar, Aseefa and Bilawal.
Photo: Karan Kapoor/Corbis Via The Guardian, here.






What was Benazir Bhutto thinking when she returned to Pakistan? She seems to have believed that she was fated to lead there, probably to die there--given she indicated that she had reason to suspect that Musharraf's adherents would commit violence against her (and she was right) when she returned.

The Bush administration was betting on her to win in the upcoming parliamentary elections and we'll never know if that would've been a good turn of events or not. Her past two administrations ended in corruption and tumult; these days, even her own family members were calling her a toady of outside interests.

Yet, she returned to her homeland to try and make some impact...and die. Was she guided by a perverse arrogance, blind faith or are the two in this case indistinguishable? Our own president seems to think he was "fated" to be the nation's leader (yeah, right, "fated" by the Supreme Court).

And what happens next is anybody's guess. And conspiracy theorists are going to have a field day because of this:

"The surgeon who treated Bhutto says she was killed by shrapnel from the blast when her suicide attacker blew himself up and not the shots he fired."

And this:

"In a press briefing the interior ministry says Bhutto died when her head struck the sunroof of the car in which she was travelling. It says no bullet or shrapnel was found in her body. Confusion over the exact cause of her death may well continue because her husband has refused permission for an autopsy." -- from the Guardian blog.

Then this, from the Associated Press reporter Ashraf Khan:

"Interior Ministry spokesman Javed Iqbal Cheema said that on Friday, the government recorded an "intelligence intercept" in which militant leader Baitullah Mehsud "congratulated his people for carrying out this cowardly act."

Cheema described Mehsud as an "al-Qaida leader" who was also behind the Karachi bomb blast in October against Bhutto that killed more than 140 people. He also announced the formation of two inquiries into Bhutto's death, one to be carried out by a high court judge and another by security forces.

Bhutto was killed Thursday when a suicide attacker shot at her and then blew himself up as she left a rally in Rawalpindi. Authorities initially said she died from bullet wounds, and a surgeon who treated her said she died from the impact of shrapnel on her skull.

But Cheema said she was killed when she tried to duck back into the vehicle, and the shock waves from the blast smashed her head into a lever attached to the sunroof, fracturing her skull, he said."


Suffice to say, this is a hell of a mess.

Underappreciated U.S. Presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich relesed this statement yesterday:

"This is a very dangerous moment for the world. Prime Minister Bhutto represented the forces of reform and the hope for an end to repression in a troubled region, and her death is a major loss to those efforts.

This terrible tragedy also underscores the need for the United States to adopt a new foreign policy toward the entire region because our current policy is all wrong. Our interference in the internal affairs of Pakistan has opened wide the doors of repression and violence. At this very moment, we should be working with leaders of the region to convene a meeting at the highest levels to begin a new effort towards stabilization and peace.

The United States must take a new direction in Pakistan and throughout the region. I met her several times, both in Washington and New York. She was deeply and genuinely dedicated to Pakistan. This is a tragic loss."

Is Esquire Reading The Blue Raccoon?


Probably not, though I am given to wonder of late about some interesting New York hits on the Sitemeter a few weeks ago when I posted both about the would-be candidacy of Dennis Kucinich and C-SPAN siren Greda Wodele (pictured above, in her glory).

Both show up in the November issue of Esquire with"The Sexiest Woman Alive" Charlize Theron leaning on a wall in a tank top and peering at you over a raised arm, like any number of men must've imagined her bracing herself against the doorway of their bedrooms. Yeah, I used to read Esquire for the articles. No I just get it for the Scarlett Johansson center fold. Wow. This one almost burned a whole in the 7-11 bag.

There, on page 165 in the "Women We Love" section, is Greda, assayed by Scott Raab, whose lush phrases aren't perhaps as gushing and fantastical as mine. He admonished me -- maybe without knowning-- and betters my description: "She is not hot, she's beautiful. Her hair, thick and mahogany shows no more traces than having been put through more than a brush. Her dark eyes are moist, her smile prim and pink. Each facial plane--her high, wide brow, that long, smooth heart-shaped stretch from cheekbone down to neck-- sings in milky harmony. That face would make old Plato--Plato's dust--rock hard."

That last bit was a bit much, to me, though I thought my, "At least in this messed up world there's one of her," was OK.

Curious, but it is the same Scott Raab who gives Dennis and Elizabeth a big exclamation point thumbs up. (p.183 and following). Dennis isn't that short--5'7" but she's six feet and wears heels. In my August 18 post, I suggested to Kucinich that he go home and set up a kind of permanent campaign fair, with rides. Well, photographer Michael Edwards posed the goofy-in-love couple kissing on a carousel. I didn't know she is the third Mrs. Kucinich. Well, he's not running as a marriage and values candidate, at least not in a hypocritical way.

I'd touch a computer screen for him, if I could, but that opportunity won't be allowed because corporate-funded centerist candidates are going to kick him out of the way. I voted for John Anderson, too. But the man who defeated him, Jimmy Carter, helped put me through college so that I didn't owe anybody a dime. Which is why I don't badmouth Jimmy.

Note To Kucinich:
Go Home.
Why the Democratic candidate should pull an old Republican trick and not leave his front porch
Image: Ohio History.org

Congressman Dennis Kucinich, whom you may know, or may not if you glean too much of your news from non-alternative sources, is running for President of the United States. This involves criss crosses of this, our gray-uht land, by plane, bus and train, and appearing in front of whatever microphone in whatever venue that will have him.

My advice: just say no.

Dennis—Can I call you Dennis?—walk with me, talk with me. Look, you know, I know, the American people know, that campaigns tax candidates in both the physical and fiscal sense. This is as it should be; if you're wanting to be our chief executive, you need to prove you really want the job.



But, look, you’re up against two massive machines. The Democrats wouldn’t mind if you dropped out of the race. If they would come to their senses and nominate you, the Republicans with cruel zeal will turn you into a cartoon piñata.

They don’t like your looks and the Bubbas used to pick on guys like you in school. But that’s all repressed anger and frustration, and the way contemporary media culture inculcates boys with violence and false sex stereotypes and what constitutes manhood and manliness. Of course, they couldn’t even get near a woman like the one to whom you've joined in matrimony, and wouldn’t know what to do with her even if they did. But that’s neither here nor there.

Face it. You’ll make no inroads with that pro-God, pro-guns, anti-gay crowd. So don’t even try. There you are, on the hustings, in Pacifica, Ca., back in April.

What if, instead, those folks came to you, on decorated buses?

Cut your losses, Dennis. Here me out on this. They say you got crazy ideas, well, mine is looney tunes.

Here it goes. Now hear me out. By the way, you on good terms with your neighbors? 'Cuz here's my plan for you.



Pull a page from the playbook of another son of Ohio, William McKinley, and go home and sit on your porch. This was the strategy plotted for McKinley in 1896 by Mark Hanna, a kind of 19th century Karl Rove. (That's Hanna on the left, courtesy Wikipedia.)

Now, yes. He'd already won the Republican nomination when he decided that the better part of valor was to sit out his own campaign. But, times are different. You need to get attention by misdirection. You must invert the pradigm of U.S. elections. If not you, who? If not now, when?

Announce on your website, through your apparatus on the blogs and the alternative media, that you’re not going to run hither and thither anymore.


Why? These mad dash campaigns are a waste of resources—the world’s and yours and ours—and since the Nixon-Kennedy debates actual campaigning is reduced to a sillier-every-year beauty pageant. Well, guess what. You’re not seeking a tiara and a sash, and I'm sure you can't sing opera or twirl a baton (though I'd like to see you try).

The people of the United States want somebody who can actually speak to issues and propose solutions and make things happen. You can declare under the glare of lights: "I don't have to be part of a dog-and-pony show to run for the highest office in the land. I can run my own dog-and-pony show, thank you very much. Nope. I’m staying put. This is my beautiful house, this is my beautiful wife."

Hug Elizabeth around the waist.

You do know how to work this.

I hope you have a porch. If you don’t have a porch, get a house that has one. Or, I guess you could use your yard. Put up big, garish tents. Turn it into a kind of perpetual Labor Day festival/picnic.

We're talking massive swags of patriotic bunting. We're talking watermelon seed-spitting contests, we're talking sack races, we're talking a "Dunk The Chump" tank with a commedia-de'l-arte clown costumed as a "Fat Cat." The media can practice taking their cheap shots. They'll start betting pools. People will keep track online of who dunked the chump most. Get a celebrity guest to be the Fat Cat. Invite alt-indie bands to play -- or the ones you like-- for impromptu concerts, and make certain you have Internet broadcast rights. Hook into the YouTube/MySpace jazz. On weekends, roll in a small Ferris wheel for kids. Cut to head-shaking reaction shots from the people down the street. "That Kucinich is nuts," someobdy says. You smile bigger.

They’ll say you’ve opened a circus and you can grin, "And your point is...?”


[The Mr. and Mrs., from Cleveland Seniors.com]


And for the most part, stay put. This maneuver will bring to greater visibility than you’ve received in months. Release statements, one in the morning and one in the afternoon, about the international situations of various kinds, per your own philosophy. Invite folks you like, and folks you may be luke warm about, to come over to the house and have chats. Get your photograph taken sitting on your porch talking and smiling.

You get up early, go to bed early, and you’ll have to put up heavy shades to be free of the press truck lights or else you’ll never sleep. It'll be sort of a hostage situation, but with much better music.

I say: have coffee klatsches in the morning with whoever shows up. Have them leave their shoes lined up at the door. The New York Times will take black and white pictures of the shoes. It'll be classic. Have Elizabeth shout down, "Don't let them track in that mud!" Sit there with three or four newspapers and just converse about what strikes your fancy. Podcast the discussion.

Make dinnertime a big affair using long rows of picnic tables with plastic covers and food served buffeet style, like a huge family reunion. Invite everybody. Before eating, stand up and give some kind of little dinner appreciation toast/blessing that addresses the compelling issue of that day.

When you feel it important enough to go into the world and apply shoe leather to the effort, then that’ll garner even more publicity. You can’t do it very often or the news value wears off. “Dennis Kucinich emerged form his lair today,” they’ll say. But let’em laugh. You know what you’re doing.

It’s a nothing campaign about something: the fate of the world as we know it. Now that’s Must See TV.

Let Dennis Menace The Establishment



First, I'm just tired of hearing the weary trope among the likeminded who may care about such matters when they say, "Dennis Kucinich is interesting, but he won't get nominated, and even if he did, he wouldn't win."

Second, let's acknowledge that pursuing an office on the level of the nation's Chief Executive is a vainglorious effort that means you're a wee bit "teched."

Conclusion: Dennis Kucinich is a little nuts. But he's my kind of nuts.






Besides, Elizabeth Harper would be First Lady. Tall redheads rule. I know, billion-eyed audience, what you see here. He's like the kid in "Animal House" when the girl falls through his bedroom ceiling, and he says, "Thanks, God!" And she could've have angled one those grabber arms and plucked him out of an assortment of plastic toys and teddy bears. However it worked, they found each other.

Kucinich is a fighter and a campaigner. He's smart, thinks well on his feet, and behind that grinning male cheerleader ebullience is some darkness and hurt. I mean, this guy lived in his car for a little while. He endured exile in his own nation. The City of Cleveland wouldn't even put his picture in their city hall, and he was their mayor. The Mob put out a hit on him, for criminy sake. And, wow, how cool would it be to have somebody with a name like his with "President" affixed to the front of it. He's not a Bush, a Clinton, or any other standard Anglo-Saxon derivative.

And I know what you're thinking: um, Barack Obama isn't quite the usual two scoops of vanilla, either. True that.

But here's my deal. I mean, what's so dreadful about sitting, and sometimes working, in Congress? Why do Hillary and Obama want to be President sooooo bad. I mean, they make the laws for crying out loud, they hold the purse strings, they get to tell the Prez what to do and how (except when they roll over and let him scratch their belly). It's not such a bad gig, all in all, and in all honesty, who needs the stress of sitting in the Oval Office? How did Truman describe it? -- "It's the crown jewel of the federal penal system."

So, I say, Hillary, Obama, stay in Congress, John Edwards go do a Jimmy Carter, or accept a Cabinet position should that come your way. And so on for the rest of them.

At bottom, full disclosure, I've thought since high school that the U.S. is too big of a nation to govern as one entity. Long ago it should've split up on regional lines in an autonomous relationship, and a governing constitution. I don't know where that puts me: an anarcho-syndicatist? A Kropotkinite? [Suggested reading: Dennis Danvers' The Watch. The novel is set in the city of my nativity, Richmond, Vee-a, and features Kropotkin as a time-shunted protagonist. Get it. Read it. ]


If this country possessed something other than a zero-sum political system that gets worse with each and every election cycle, and instead allowed minority parties to pick up seats in Congress, we'd all have reason to think somebody "down there in Warshington" supported our views. Instead, we're in the thrall of the few who bother to vote, and Diebold machines.

Barring some unthinkable, seismic, cataclysmic demolition of The World As We Know It that throws us into a world like The Postman, I don't see such a radical change occurring.

So, I support Kucinich. Think about it. Dennis as Prez, Obama Vice Prez, Wesley Clark at Defense, or State-or the new Secretary of Peace; Hillary running Health and Human Services or Education; Al Gore at Interior; John Edwards at Labor. Throw in some moderate, somewhat sane Repbulicans because even they, on a good day, can have some of those better ideas that Ford used to say it got. Congressman Ron Paul (really a Libertarian, by another name) at Commerce? Lincoln Chaffee needs a job and he's one of those people--seems from my glancing knowledge of him -- that people would want in public service.

So that's my fantasy.

Peace out, as the kids say in the skreet. Stay cool.


"Political rights do not originate in parliaments, they are, rather, forced upon them from without. And even their enactment into law has for a long time been no guarantee of their security. Just as the employers try to nullify every concession they had made to labour as soon as opportunity offered, as soon as any signs of weakness were observable in the workers' organizations, so governments are always inclined to restrict or to abbrogate completely rights and freedoms that have been achieved if they imagine that the people will put up no resistance. . . . Political rights do not exist because they have been legally set down on a piece of paper, but only when they have become the ingrown habit of a people, and when any attempt to impair them will meet with the violent resistance of the populace." -- Rudolph Rocker